1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facility equipment cooperation system, equipment control method, and agent apparatus which allow an apparatus on a network for an information system to control facility equipment on a network for a control system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to achieve labor saving or energy saving, a building automation system (BAS) has been developed by adopting up-to-date techniques. Currently, advanced building facility intensive management using IP network techniques has been implemented.
For example, remote monitoring for remote building management can be implemented by extending a network for a building automation system to the outside by using a virtual network technique such as a VPN. Alternatively, the requirement that “a building manager remotely performs building management” can be satisfied by using a remote desktop environment technique such as RDP for the operation window of a management terminal for intensive building management.
Consider, for example, remote control which allows the user to turn on/off lightings in a building by operating a cellular phone. For such operation, a system which allows “a registered user to perform lighting-on/off operation via a cellular phone” can be implemented by using a Web server scheme of booting up a Web server which can be accessed from the cellular phone, making the Web server provide user management and an operation window, and transmitting a lighting-on/off control instruction to a building automation system as a result of operation on the window on the cellular phone.
For example, JP-A 2005-332272(KOKAI) discloses a service of connecting a conference reservation server on the OA side to a building automation system. This service is a model in which a server installed on the building automation system side interprets and executes a global change command for a plurality of facility equipment states from a conference reservation server.
As described above, a building automation system has been extended while the IT technology has been actively adopted.
Recently, business systems in intranets and content service systems in the Internet have vigorously promoted service cooperation such as the creation of new services by combining different types of services and the effective use of conventional services. When a building automation system is to participate in service cooperation, it is necessary to make the building automation system cooperate with a system outside the control of the building automation system instead of implementing services in the conventional form of the extension of the building automation system. That is, it is necessary to implement mutual connection between different management domains.
Connecting a building automation system to a different management domain, however, cannot simply implement even “cooperation between a building automation system and intra-tenant systems in the building” as one of the simplest cases. For example, the technique disclosed in JP-A 2005-332272(KOKAI) is not premised on the use of the technique in a building in which a plurality of tenants are resident. That is, there is no consideration about how to connect and manage a network which manages each intra-tenant system and a network for a building automation system, the information management cost which is produced when user information in each tenant is kept on the building automation system side, and the like.
In the conventional technology, there is no consideration about problems concerning the cooperation and authentication between a plurality of intra-tenant systems and a building automation system. This imposes great restrictions on a user in each tenant in a building when he/she tries to control facility equipment on the building automation system side from a corresponding intra-tenant system.